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It’s not just the Technology issue this week, but also the Thanksgiving issue; Roz Chast’s cover blends the two.

It got me thinking about New Yorker Thanksgiving covers of the past, and looking through them I found this one, by Alajalov from 1949. As with Ms. Chast’s cover, it blends the Thanksgiving table scenario with (then) relatively new household technology (the television set). What a great cover!

Robots abound in this issue (on the cover, in a cartoon, in an illustration).

Here are the cartoonists whose work appears in the issue…

Among them are two Thanksgiving drawings, one by P.C. Vey (also blending technology and Thanksgiving), and David Borchart, who gives us a wonderful (Macy’s?) parade drawing. My only wish is that it was run larger.

Also of note in the issue: the debut appearance of Ali Solomon. Ms. Soloman is the 10th new cartoonist introduced this year, and the 22nd new cartoonist introduced since Emma Allen became the New Yorker‘s cartoon editor in the Spring of 2017.

Still missing: Rea Irvin’s iconic (not to mention beautiful) Talk masthead (read about it here). Missing since the Spring of 2017 — this is what it looks like:

An article on the Billy Ireland exhibit has been posted on the Columbus Dispatch site. As with yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Thomas Vinciguerra review of the big red New Yorker trope box, the article is behind a pay wall. Here’s a link in case you wish to pursue it.

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From the vault, here’s Ink Spill’s belated obit for Ms. Shermund, originally posted in 2009 :

Barbara Shermund, who died in early September, 1978, had the misfortune of passing away during a newspaper strike that affected the paper of record, The New York Times. An extensive search has turned up just one obituary for her, a four sentence notice that ran in a newspaper covering the New Jersey coastal town where she lived for a number of years toward the end of her life.

For someone who contributed hundreds of cartoons and eight covers to The New Yorker Magazine, then went on to become a mainstay at Esquire, four sentences seems a bit slight. Here then is another notice, a little late, and a little longer.

Born in San Francisco in 1899 to artistic parents (her father was an architect), Ms. Shermund studied at The California School of Fine Arts before heading east, at the age of twenty-six, to New York. She told Colliers that her initial visit east became permanent “after she had eaten up her return fare.” In June of that very year, she made her debut at the four month old New Yorker with a cover of a young woman sporting a hip hairdo, eyes closed, resting her arm over a railing, against a black sky peppered with stars. In a year’s time her cartoons, many if not most of which were written by her, were appearing in nearly every issue of the magazine.

Her style had a sway to it that fit the times. Her subjects, executed in pen and ink and wash, were often hip young women, just a bit jaded – the sort that famously inhabited F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise. She once offered up this brief glimpse into her private life, saying she liked “fancy dancing and dogs.”

Liza Donnelly, author of Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Greatest Women Cartoonists and their Cartoons, had this to say about Ms. Shermund:

“Barbara Shermund was one of the more prolific cartoonists of the early New Yorker. Her breezy drawing style and humor reflected the new attitudes of urban women in the twenties and thirties, and she can be considered one of the early feminist cartoonists. The New Yorker sought to appeal to both men and women with its humor, and Shermund, along with other women cartoonists of the magazine, were ground breakers in that regard, creating cartoons from a woman’s perspective that could be enjoyed by all. Her cartoons were irreverent, sassy, and a true reflection of her times.”

Shermund traveled widely – Donnelly wrote of her that “she was something of a wanderer, living with friends in the city and the upstate town of Woodstock [NY], never really having a set address.” Eventually she settled down in Sea Bright, New Jersey, a barrier beach town, just about an hour’s drive from New York.

The last of her five hundred and ninety-seven drawings in The New Yorker appeared September 16, 1944; her last cover appeared August 5, 1944. Although her relationship with The New Yorker fizzled in the mid 1940s, she participated in an Irving Penn group photo of eighteen New Yorker cartoonists ( it ran in the August 1947 issue of Vogue). Ms. Shermund, dressed in dark clothing and wearing a great wide brimmed hat, stares directly at the camera. Sitting directly in front of her is George Price, and Steinberg; overhead, reclining on a platform is Charles Addams. Off to Ms. Shermund’s right is Helen Hokinson, looking just a little apprehensive.

The discs accompanying The Complete New Yorker allow one to see all of Barbara Shermund’s work in their natural habitat. Nine of her drawings appear in the The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker, and of course all of her work can be seen on the discs accompanying the book.

The Daily Cartoon contributing New Yorker cartoonists for the past week: David Sipress, Peter Kuper, Jason Chatfield (with Scott Dooley), and Jason Adam Katzenstein. Not so much a Trumpian week this week.

Out mid-January 2019 from Fantagraphics, Mort Gerberg On The Scene. The publisher tells us that the book is a “career retrospective of Gerberg’s magazine cartoons, sketchbook drawings, and on-the-scene reportage sketches.”

According to the current issue of the National Cartoonists Society publication The National Cartoon!st [sic] Mr. Gerberg’s art will be on exhibit at The New York Historical Society in 2019.

I’m trying to find a way to link to the excellent Gerberg interview in the issue.

Trivia: within the interview a full page Gerberg cartoon from the October 20, 1965 New Yorker is identified as Mr. Gerberg’s first New Yorker cartoon (Mr. Gerberg talks about the history of the cartoon in question). In fact, Mr. Gerberg’s first New Yorker cartoon ran in April of that year (the issue of April 10th, ’65). This is it:

…Thomas Vinciguerra, author of the wonderful Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E.B. White, James Thurber, And The Golden Age Of The New Yorker (Norton, 2016) has reviewed the big red trope box, The New Yorker Encyclopedia Of Cartoons for The Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, the WSJ‘s paywall gets in the way of fully reading it. Here’s a link anyway (in case you subscribe, or wish to).

…And from Seven Days, November 14, 2018, an article on Edward Koren’s just published In The Wild.

David Sipress, who has been contributing his work to The New Yorker since July of 1998, recently spoke at Yale University Art Gallery. You can see the entire talk here — it’s generously peppered with cartoons.

Mr. Sipress has asked the Spill to include this proviso: “New Yorker cartoon aficionados will no doubt spot a number of inaccuracies in the course of this talk (dates of cartoons, people’s ages etc, and I forgot about Booth’s cartoon in the 9/11 issue). Chalk them up to onstage jitters and the mouth beating the brain to the punch.”

Above: a Sipress New Yorker cartoon from 2006.

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The Cartoon Companion‘s “Max” and “Simon” dissect the cartoons in the latest New Yorker (dated November 19, 2018). Read it here.

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Donnelly’s work in Galway Cartoon Festival

Liza Donnelly’s work is included in The Galway Cartoon Festival (“Galway’s Celebration of the Funny Drawing”), an international cartoon event happening now. Details here.

Ms. Donnelly began contributing to the New Yorker in 1982. Link here to her website.

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Chatfield’s Work In Australian Cartoon Exhibit

Jason Chatfield’s work is included in an Australian exhibit, Behind The Lines, (further reading: an article here, from The Sydney Morning Herald) featuring the work of 30+ cartoonists, and over 80 cartoons.

Mr. Chatfield began contributing to The New Yorker in July of 2017. Link to his website here.

And… tonight at NYC’s famed Strand Bookstore, Mr. Krimstein will take part in Pen Out Loud: Visual Disobedience. Details here.

Mr. Krimstein began contributing cartoons to The New Yorker in August of 2000.

Bonus graphic! Below is the Strand by New Yorker cartoonist Bob Eckstein, as found in his splendid book, Footnotes From The World’s Greatest Bookstores: True Tales And Lost Moments From Book Buyers, Booksellers, And Book Lovers (Clarkson Potter, 2016)